Tuesday, October 9, 2012

Meeting Between Change List And Patriotic Union Of Kurdistan Spurred By Increasing Power Of Kurdish President Barzani

The Change list is the largest opposition party in the
Kurdistan Regional parliament. Nishurwan Mustafa, one of the co-founders of the
Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), created Change in 2009 after becoming
disillusioned with the path the PUK was following. In the last year, the
Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and PUK have both courted Mustafa as the
balance between the two ruling parties has shifted in favor of the former. In
September 2012, President Jalal Talabani and Mustafa met in an attempt to forge
a new relationship after the two had become bitter rivals. What brought them
together was their growing apprehension about the power that Kurdish President
Massoud Barzani of the KDP has been able to amass.

Beforehand, both the KDP and PUK were courting Change. New
Kurdish Premier Nechirvan Barzani of the KDP re-instated government officials who were sacked by the PUK for supporting Change after he took office in
February. He and President Barzani also had conferences with Change List
officials. Then on June 1, at the PUK’s 37th anniversary President
Talabani gave a speech, which mentioned the Change List and Mustafa 29 times. Later that month, Talabani’s deputy, Barham Salah met with the Change List leader. At the time, Change claimed the visit was a personal one, not
political. This was all due to the changing power relations between the two
ruling parties. Until recently, the two parties were relatively equal. Now
however, the KDP is in the ascendency, in part due to the PUK’s poor showing in
the 2009 regional elections, and the emergency of the Change List. Many believe
that the PUK will do even worse in the future, and was fragmenting as a result.
It’s for this reason that the KDP and PUK were trying to win over Mustafa.
Whoever did so could help their cause in future balloting.

Whether Change and the PUK can make this work is not known
yet. The two have a lot of bad blood, and some are obviously unhappy with
improving relations. On the other hand, their fear of President Barzani may be
enough to bring them together. Whatever the case, it does show that politics in
the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) are not just about the ruling parties
anymore. With its showing in the 2009 elections, Change has set itself apart
from the rest of the opposition parties in the KRG parliament. What comes next
is the big question. Will Mustafa and Talabani be able to work out their
differences, and provide an opposition to Barzani or will the PUK simply co-opt
Change?

No comments:

About Me

My name is Joel Wing. I have been reading, writing, and researching Iraq since 2002.
I have appeared in Fareed Zakaria on CNN, the Christian Science Monitor, The National, The Daily Dish Columbia Journalism Review, Mother Jones, PBS’ Frontline, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Institute for the Study of War, Radio Free Iraq.
I have been mentioned in the books Iraq: From War To A New Authoritarianism by Toby Dodge, Imagining The Nation; Nationalism, Sectarianism and Socio-Political Conflict in Iraq by Harith Al-Qarawee, ISIS Inside the Army of Terror by Michael Weiss and Hassan Hassan, The Rise of the Islamic State by Patrick Cockburn, Iraq and Crimes of Aggressive War by John Hagan, Joshua Kaiser, and Anna Hanson.
My work has been published in Iraq in AK News, Al-Mada, Sotaliraq, All Iraq News Agency and Ur News.
I have written for the Jamestown Foundation and Tom Ricks’ Best Defense Blog at Foreign Policy, and I wrote a chapter for the book Volatile Landscape: Iraq And Its Insurgent Movements.
If you wish to contact me personally my email is: motown67@aol.com